IF there is one thing the French government can’t stand hearing these days, it is that they hate entrepreneurs. So much so that they just did a U-turn on a tax they had planned to implement on capital gains.

It only took a few days of intense online campaigning from a collective of web entrepreneurs for the ministers of budget and the economy to repeal a measure nobody had thought particularly shocking, and which was at the centre of François Hollande’s presidential programme. Indeed, it looks as if the French government has yielded to the power of social networks.

A week ago, French web entrepreneurs set up a Facebook group called Les Pigeons, aiming to defend entrepreneurs’ rights. They now have 53,000 followers and counting. Their nickname comes from a French expression: a ‘pigeon’ is a chump. In other words, French entrepreneurs don’t want to be treated like chumps, easily fooled and easily abused.

At the heart of their fronde, as some have called it, is their outrage at Hollande’s pledge to bring capital tax in line with income tax. At present, if entrepreneurs wish to sell their company, or stocks, they will pay 19 per cent tax on capital gains (to which is added 15.5 per cent of social security tax). The new government had planned instead to follow the different strata of income tax: in theory, the bigger the capital gain, the bigger the tax (with a maximum 45 per cent taxation).

This didn’t go down well with entrepreneurs such as Marc Simoncini, founder of online dating website meetic, and Jean-David Chamboredon, head of an internet Investment fund, whose opinion piece published in economic daily La Tribune gave momentum to the Pigeon movement.

In just a few days, web entrepreneurs’ wrath spread on social networks and the original chump pun became a formidable lobbying force. And since we’re in France, virtual protest has also had to materialise into a street demonstration. Les Pigeons called a protest in front of the National Assembly.

Everybody was taken by surprise by the viral blitzkrieg: the government, the traditional media and even Sarkozy’s party, which only gave its seal of approval after the battle took place.

However, for many socialist MPs, it also looks as if what started as a childlike prank has got out of hand. For many on the left, there is no justification for Hollande’s government to treat web entrepreneurs differently from other entrepreneurs, as is going to be the case.

Besides, the entrepreneurs’ anger is based mostly on fantasies: the dreaded taxation would only concern a tiny minority of them. Retiring entrepreneurs or those who reinvest their capital gain would for instance be exempted.

The pigeons’ recriminations have even frightened some French entrepreneurs, such as Stephane Distinguin, who confided in Libération that he sees them as a kind of Tea Party lobby, made of big egos and demagogue entrepreneurs who think that bullying and intimidation are the way forward.

The chumps’ shouting has certainly worked, let’s hope that the French government will think carefully next time it considers giving in on measures for which it was elected. — The Guardian, London